


"yes"

by Aryashi, relationshipcrimes



Series: Stag Beetles and Bonus Scenes [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Almost Stag Legs Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Quirrel and Lemm Talk About Quirrel's Metaphorical Ex, Two Bros Chillin at Snowy Shore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22794352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: Alternate Chapter 8 scene, plus secondary epilogue. Quirrel and Lemm talk about Monomon.
Relationships: Relic Seeker Lemm/Quirrel (Pre-relationship)
Series: Stag Beetles and Bonus Scenes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638751
Comments: 30
Kudos: 482





	"yes"

“I miss my wife, Lemm,” says Quirrel, just as Lemm had been about to dig into Hallownest’s greatest Archive of history.

Lemm whips around faster than he can blink to gape at Quirrel like a hooked fish. Quirrel, the absolute bastard, is looking off into the middle distance, doesn’t even have the decency to be paying attention while he drops this bombshell on Lemm’s lap? To look Lemm in the eye as he peels back this new layer of self? Drops the biggest influx of information from a bug more secretive and mysterious than any Void Kingdom artifact? Information this important requires tact, subtlety, precision--

“WHAT,” says Lemm at the top of his lungs.

Quirrel has the _audacity_ to look confused.

“OH NO YOU DON’T,” Lemm says, at the same volume as his earlier query. “YOU DO NOT GET TO BE THE CONFUSED PARTY. I DO. I HAVE FULL RIGHTS.”

“Lemm? What are you shouting for?”

Oh gods and wyrm, he said it while he was off spacing out in one of his fever dazes--oh gods and _wyrm_ , of course Quirrel would say something like that _only_ when he was in a daze, like Quirrel would ever open up about something like his--his--his _wife_? Quirrel is _married_? _Was_ married? Past tense? Misses her, _present tense_? To a _woman_? He had a _relationship_ with a woman? He had _relations_ with a woman? And he’s telling Lemm this _now_ in the _Archives_ for some ungodly reason? “How do you--why do you--” no Lemm do _not_ ask Quirrel _why_ he misses his wife who he refers to in the _past tense_ you absolute _moron_ “--what do you _mean_ , ‘you miss your wife’?”

“I said that?” Even Quirrel looks floored. “I--I must have misspoke. Think nothing of it. A simple slip of the tongue.”

“‘I miss my wife, Lemm’ is a lot of tongue to slip at one time.”

“Truly, I was blessed to manage the feat by accident,” says Quirrel.

“This is ludicrous. If you don’t want me to pry, then simply tell me so!”

“There’s nothing to tell!” Quirrel snaps with force like Lemm has never heard from him. Not even standing before the Hollow Knight’s statue in the rain. “I have never been married, let alone lost a wife, so whatever nonsense I said has no bearing on anything!”

Lemm looks at Quirrel, long and hard. Eyes the curl in his fingers, how his hand grips his nail tight, how he’s gone from looking up towards the ceiling to glaring down at the floor. Takes in Quirrel’s bearing like he takes in a relic’s condition. All at once, with an eye for specific signifiers to guide his analysis.

“You really are a terrible liar,” says Lemm.

Quirrel’s eyes are narrowed to slits. “If you cannot be convinced, I won’t waste my time. I’m going for a walk.”

“By yourself? In a place like this?”

Quirrel glances back towards Lemm, and something like regret flashes across his features. Or perhaps it's another flavor of annoyance. Lemm is no expert on the emotions of other bugs.

Lemm crosses his arms. “If you need some time to get your story straight, you could just say so.”

Quirrel’s face scrunches up in complete mortification, and he says, with some force, “Good _bye,_ Lemm!”

Then he leaves.

(Later, when Lemm finds Quirrel stumbling out of the Teacher’s Chamber covered in acid burns, injured but clear-eyed and wonderfully alive _,_ this conversation slips his mind entirely.)

*

Actually, Lemm forgets about it entirely until they wind up invited to a wedding in Snowy Shore.

“Not even a formal dress, not any sort of altar or central piece--not even a ceremony official!” Lemm rants at the shoreline, while Quirrel pulls out a bag of bread for a cold waterside snack. “But the array of official tools they had to use, the elaborateness of the rituals--all the same staples of Hallownest weddings but without a central authority figure--unbelievable. Unbelievable! And this town has the nerve to just sit here in the corner of a winter hellscape, barely any communication in or out, and be _fascinating_ and not advertise themselves as such in any way or form…”

“I’m not sure most towns are interested in recruiting Relic Seekers to interrogate newly-weds on the history of their dress hemmings in the middle of a ceremony,” says Quirrel.

“I’m not going to just sit back and let them get away without explaining themselves, Quirrel, those things were dated back at _least_ three centuries ago. Think about it--I could have gone my whole life without ever knowing anything about this place and I wouldn’t have even known what I was missing.”

Quirrel hands him a slice of bread in the smuggest fashion that Lemm had never known a bug could hand someone bread.

“I’m glad you had fun,” says Quirrel. “Although I think most people tend to enjoy weddings for the company and conversation.”

Lemm shudders.

“Fine, not the people. The food and drink,” says Quirrel.

“It’s about the _relics_ , Quirrel.”

“I don’t know if it qualifies as a relic if the bride is still wearing it.” Quirrel takes a bit of bread himself, but only nibbles at it contemplatively, looking disgustingly pleased to be sitting out in the chilly winter sun on a beach full of snow like some sort of tree-hugging fool. Outrageous how Quirrel manages to make it look like fun. “I can’t believe you’d never been to a wedding before. They’re known to be fun, not just a bundle of ceremonies to write papers about.”

Lemm grunts. “Maybe for _you_ , since you were the one getting married.”

Quirrel hums. And then sits back up. “You _still_ think I’m married?”

Lemm squints. “You’re the one who said you were,” he says, a bit cautiously. Not that Lemm is one to pry, and not that Lemm is one to get overly invested in the guy who had been living in Lemm’s house for months, but Lemm’s hardly met a bug more tight-lipped about himself than Quirrel, nor a bug who so thoroughly does not appreciate anyone prying. He hasn’t seen Quirrel’s expression go shuttered like a locked window in ages, but if he never sees it again it’ll be too soon, so he treads lightly.

Thank the gods, Quirrel only shakes his head. “No, don’t mind what I said. I wasn’t in my right mind. It was… just a passing fantasy. A pleasant dream.”

“You _dreamed_ you were married,” says Lemm. _To a specific person_ , if Lemm’s suspicions about Quirrel’s nice sword and Quirrel’s familiarity with the Archives are right.

“Well, when you put it like that, you make it sound like a sad tale of star-crossed lovers who never were.”

Quirrel’s got this awful look on his face--not even longing, but a sort of fond resignation. “No, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me chatter on about the tale,” he says, like Lemm did not sign up for this entire stupid road trip specifically so that he would get to hear Quirrel chatter about things. “It’s a short story, in any event. So short it never happened. I would never have asked her. It wasn’t my place, and it wasn’t our relationship, and she would never have said…”

“Oh, ridiculous,” Lemm mutters, knowing Hallownest and Quirrel’s shared infatuation with decorum, ceremony, and propriety. “She’s the one who gave you that sword, wasn’t she? I’m right, aren’t I? And you mean to tell me that she wouldn’t have married you if you’d asked?”

And then Lemm shuts himself up, having realized that Quirrel had trailed away on his own, blinking at the white winter sun in surprise. Also, Quirrel isn’t saying anything, and Lemm remembers that he’s sticking his nubby finger in a long-lost love story over centuries old that he barely knows anything about--and for that matter, what would it do now, with everything dead and gone and buried at least twice over?

“Never mind,” says Lemm, the second Quirrel says in surprise, “She _would_ have.”

“What?” says Lemm.

Quirrel starts _laughing_ \--in the sort of nervous, giddy way someone does when they’ve just been proposed to on the spot. “You’re right--of course you’re right. Of course she would have. If I’d just _asked_! Gods! It would’ve been a scandal and a half, someone of her birth marrying down, and she would have _loved_ it--the bombshell announcement, the statement, how horrified the metropolitan snobs would have been--the sheer _commitment_ to the idea that innate social class was nonsense, the inversion of marriage--but would all that have stopped her? Certainly not! And who would’ve been able to stop her? The King? She wouldn’t have been afraid of the idea at all. She would’ve adored it.”

 _Sounds like she mostly just adored you_ , Lemm’s brain thinks, which Lemm’s filter successfully snatches before it can escape his mouth and shoves it deep into the recesses of his brain, where all the rest of his feelings stay bound and gagged until the day Lemm dies.

“I shouldn't have said anything,” says Lemm. He _had_ said he’d make a bad traveling partner. He tries to shove his cold hands in his beard to avoid eye contact before remembering he cut half the thing off. “It was a bad joke. Dredging up old memories like this does nothing.”

“I suppose what’s done is done,” says Quirrel, a tone of voice that sounds very much like his usual except that it is, perhaps, just a fraction quieter. “But I suppose that there’s solace in knowing that the fault is mine. If I hadn’t been such a coward, then things could have been different. But instead I chose to look away until it was entire lifetimes too late.”

Lemm shoves his hands in his coat instead and buries his face in the remains of his beard.

“I suppose the best gift we can give the past is to make sure we don’t repeat its mistakes going forward, isn’t that right?” says Quirrel cheerily.

“If that’s the poetic takeaway you want to bring out this…”

Quirrel leans back on the snowbank. A few crumbs from his bread fall into the snow. Still looking out at the icy waters, Quirrel says, “Lemm, take a lesson from this old relic over here: if you ever fall in love--”

“--falling in love at _my_ age, spending twenty-four hours a day with a dating pool of just you?”

“Even so! If you ever fall in love, make sure to let them know.”

Even now, with half of Quirrel’s mask off to expose his smiling eye, even knowing of the people Quirrel’s loved and lost in his life, it still feels like Quirrel has a bottomless well of secrets that Lemm will never know, and that Quirrel is still too far away for comfort. Lemm tucks his face deeper into his coat. “Hm,” he says, and lets the conversation lapse into comfortable quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> small brain: stag legs is about quirrel deciding to leave blue lake
> 
> bigger brain: stag legs is about lemm deciding to leave hallownest 
> 
> even bigger brain: stag legs is about quirrel and lemm both learning how to live again
> 
> galaxy brain: stag legs is about lemm realizing he’s gay
> 
> This was inspired this these amazing pics from Mak, which you can gaze at adoringly here --> https://doodledrawsthings.tumblr.com/post/190833662992/its-valentines-day-which-means-im-required-to


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